Australia is investing in modular manufacturing. So why are major projects going offshore?

There is an uncomfortable contradiction emerging in Australia’s push towards industrialised construction. Governments are investing in manufacturing capability, technical training and advanced construction methods, while major developers are looking overseas for the factories capable of delivering projects at scale. (main image: BROAD Group’s Holon stainless-steel modular building under construction in China.)

For James Briggs, Founder and Managing Director of Shepparton-based JMB Modular Buildings, the two approaches are becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile.

Following Built Offsite’s coverage of the University of Melbourne’s Scaling MMC in Australia workshop, where Freecity’s use of Chinese-manufactured volumetric modules prompted debate about domestic manufacturing capacity, Briggs has delivered an uncompromising response.

“This is not about being anti-import or anti-China. It is about protecting Australian jobs, sovereign manufacturing capability, national security, industry investment and the future of advanced manufacturing in this country.”

Briggs has invested his personal savings in establishing domestic modular manufacturing operations. His concern is that Australian businesses are being encouraged to invest in new facilities, technology and skilled workers without any comparable commitment to directing construction projects towards them.

And the problem is circular. Australian manufacturers are told they lack the capacity to supply major projects. Yet without those projects, there is little commercial justification for investing in the capacity they are told they need.

“You cannot expect Australian manufacturing capacity to grow while continually sending the very projects needed to build that capacity overseas.”

Government investment without procurement certainty
Briggs points to Victoria’s approximately $50 million investment in the Future of Housing Construction Centre of Excellence as an example of the disconnect between policy ambition and procurement.

The investment is intended to strengthen advanced construction skills and manufacturing capability. But Briggs questions what happens when the businesses employing those skills cannot secure sufficient work.

“Government cannot claim to support sovereign manufacturing while allowing the project pipeline needed to sustain it to be sent offshore.”

He also raises questions about how imported volumetric buildings satisfy local content and employment obligations on publicly funded projects, including Victoria’s Local Jobs First framework and Indigenous procurement requirements.

These questions warrant distinction between public and private developments, and between the local content obligations actually imposed on individual projects. Nevertheless, Briggs is challenging governments to explain how their procurement decisions support their stated manufacturing objectives.

He is also demanding greater transparency around claims that imported modular buildings offer superior value.

“Show us the complete, like-for-like costs, including manufacturing, shipping, insurance, transport, cranage, installation, compliance, certification, defects, warranties and local site works.”

It is a reasonable test. Factory-gate manufacturing costs alone reveal little about the comparative cost of a completed, certified and occupied Australian building.

Briggs also wants more scrutiny of imported modules’ compliance with Australian building standards, the inspection of concealed structural components, corrosion protection during international shipping and responsibility for defects and warranties.

These concerns do not establish that imported buildings are non-compliant. They do, however, identify where independent verification and clearly assigned responsibility matter.

The capacity argument that risks becoming permanent
Briggs concedes an important point. Australia’s volumetric manufacturing sector does not currently possess the collective capacity to service every major tier-one construction project.

But accepting that limitation as a permanent condition would effectively guarantee the outcome.

Manufacturing capacity is not created by policy statements. It requires capital investment, skilled workers, production systems and, critically, confidence that factories will have sufficient work to justify expansion.

Nor does the argument eliminate the commercial case for offshore manufacturing. Developers face financing constraints, delivery deadlines and obligations to manage project risk. Established overseas factories can offer production capacity that Australia has yet to develop at comparable scale.

The unresolved question is whether relying on that capacity today makes it more difficult to establish a competitive domestic alternative tomorrow.

Briggs argues that government, major builders and developers need to work directly with Australian manufacturers to establish credible, longer-term project pipelines.

“We are not asking for protection from competition. We are asking for fair competition, transparent compliance, genuine consideration of Australian economic benefits and a procurement framework that gives sovereign manufacturing a realistic opportunity to grow.”

There is no simple answer to the competing pressures of housing delivery, cost, manufacturing capacity and procurement policy.

But Briggs has identified a question that cannot indefinitely be deferred: if Australia considers domestic modular manufacturing strategically important, who is prepared to provide the projects that will make it commercially viable?

Find JMB Modular HERE